In the early morning hours on June 28, 1969, a police raid at the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village sparked a series of confrontations and riots from the harassed and abused LGBT community. Led by drag queens and trans women, the Stonewall riots marked the beginning of a movement for gay liberation among the LGBT communities of not only New York but also San Francisco and Chicago and spreading out further and further into America. In terms of gay activism in the United States, the Stonewall uprising was our Declaration of Independence, our Lexington and Concord.

Which is why the abject failure of the 2015 movie Stonewall, directed by Roland Emmerich, was felt so deeply. In dramatizing the events leading up to the Stonewall riot, Emmerich committed any number of sins, both cinematic (dull, flat characters) and sociological (centering the story on a fictionalized white, cisgender, Midwestern gay teen instead of the more historically accurate demographic of femme queers, drag queens, and trans women of color).

Emmerich’s Stonewall was instantly panned by all critics (10% on Rotten Tomatoes!) and vehemently smacked down by gay critics and audiences in particular.

So on this anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall uprising, if you want to commemorate the event with a thematically appropriate movie, you should. Just not Stonewall. There are so many other, better, more enriching movies about gay activism to choose from. They are, by definition, not all happy tales. The history of gay activism in America (and elsewhere) has been a history of fighting back against violence, harassment, and most prominently a government that spent the better part of a decade obstinately refusing to help fight the AIDS crisis. But, you know, it’s not Mardi Gras we’re commemorating today. Learn your history. Respect your forebears. Stream these movies.

'The Times of Harvey Milk' (1984) / 'Milk' (2008)

Everett Collection

Two films that should be watched in tandem. Or at the very least, don’t just watch Milk, the 2008 Gus Van Sant movie that won Sean Penn his second Oscar for playing pioneering San Francisco politician Harvey Milk. Penn’s performance is a strong one indeed, and he brings humanity, energy and great pride to Milk as he rallies for gay people to come out of the closet and be heard. But you have to see the real Harvey Milk in action to get the full picture, and the Oscar winning doc The Times of Harvey Milk is unimprovable.

'BPM (Beats Per Minute)' (2017)

Everett Collection

Last year’s most invigorating LGBT film was this French story of the Act Up movement fighting the AIDS epidemic in France in the early 1980s. The way it depicts community as a powerful yet fractious thing makes for some of the best filmmaking about gay activism of all time.

'And the Band Played On' (1993)

Back during a time when the AIDS crisis was at its most prevalent and terrifying, HBO made this film based on the book of the same name, chronicling the earliest days of the medical and public-health communities dealing with the then-unnamed AIDS outbreak. The cast is phenomenal, with Matthew Modine, Lily Tomlin, and Ian McKellen in major roles, and packed solid with big stars like Richard Gere, Steve Martin, Anjelica Huston, Phil Collins, Richard Jenkins, and Alan Alda in brief appearances. It’s a hugely powerful film about the scope of the disease and how hard people had to fight to get the government to help.

'How to Survive a Plague' (2012)

Everett Collection

Larry Kramer’s lifelong fight for gay rights has been dramatized — in the Broadway play and HBO movie The Normal Heart — but the best depiction of Kramer and the founding of ACT UP can be found in this documentary about the early days of AIDS activism.

'Vito' (2011)

Vito Russo was an early gay activist who fought as hard as anyone during the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s, as well as co-founding GLAAD. A film historian, Russo’s work was spent dissecting the representation of gay people in our popular entertainment. His series of lectures, “The Celluloid Closet,” about Hollywood’s long history of denying and demonizing homosexuality was made into a movie after his death. This HBO-produced documentary is a warm, illuminating, and sad tribute to his life and death.

'The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson' (2017)

Netflix

A self-identified drag queen, queer activist, and “the mayor of Christopher Street,” Marsha P. Johnson was one of the central figures in the Stonewall uprising. It’s often been said that Johnson threw the first brick that kicked off the riots with the cops that night. This Netflix film tracks an investigation into Johnson’s 1992 murder, which law enforcement declined to pursue.

'Stonewall Uprising' (2011)

If you want to know the story on the events of Stonewall, stay far away from the 2015 Emmerich version and instead stream this American Experience documentary, which offers a more illuminating and enriching history of the preeminent event in the history of gay activism.